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YUBA CITY, California, October 3, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Tens of thousands of pro-life Americans joined together at more than 1,800 locations throughout the United States Sunday in the annual Life Chain. Each year on the first Sunday of October pro-lifers join in a powerful street witness campaign that proclaims the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception until natural death.

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In Lincoln, NE, thousands of pro-life people lined miles of O Street as part of the Lincoln Life Chain. Sister Mary Clare, a Catholic missionary from Vietnam, has been holding her sign near the corner of O Street and Cotner Boulevard every year since she arrived in Lincoln in 1995. About a block away from Sister Mary Clare was a Greek Orthodox priest, who held an icon of Jesus, and Charles Yost. In his 20 years of pro-life gatherings, Yost told the Lincoln Journal-Star, he now sees fewer passersby offering middle fingers to the pro-life sign holders.

In Florida, hundreds of participants of all ages formed a loose human chain stretching more than four miles along the U.S. 192. Corridor in Melbourne and West Melbourne. A dozen Space County churches helped recruit volunteers. Wearing a “Choose Life” T-shirt, Evelyn Kowalak helped distribute signs to participants. “We believe in the value of human life,” Kowalak told FloridaToday.com.  “These babies have no voice, so we need to provide a voice for them.”

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In Greensboro, NC, 674 people stretched nearly two miles to silently share the pro-life message on abortion.  David Foppe, a parishioner at Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church in Greensboro, told WFMY News 2 that 30 area churches and schools registered to participate. He added that although this wasn’t the longest Life Chain ever formed in Greensboro, attendance was up about 200 people from last year.

In Omaha, NE, organizer Patrick Eberly told the Omaha World-Herald that between 600 and 900 people lined a portion of Dodge Street. Eberly said that more than 60 congregations, some schools, and other organizations were represented.

In Peoria, IL, about 300 people gathered along University Street. Anna Smith, who attended with her mother, wore a shirt that read “I am adopted.” “I am against all forms of abortion,” Smith told the Peoria Journal-Star. “Adoption is a wonderful alternative.” Some attendees held signs that read “Adoption: The Loving Option.”

In Laurel, MS, more than 250 people lined both sides of 16th Avenue.  The people, who held up signs in support of Proposition 26, the Mississippi pro-life personhood amendment, represented more than 15 churches from around Jones County. “This is really a prayer time,” Carol Harbaugh of Center for Pregnancy Choices told WDAM. “Yes we’re out making a statement with our signs, but each one is praying just because we have a great God who hears our prayers.”

In Zanesville, OH, pro-lifers formed a pro-life chain on Maple Avenue. Pro-life supporter and family physician Patrick Johnston, who is collecting signatures supporting the Ohio Personhood Amendment, told whiznews.com that he is faced with women in crisis pregnancies. “When we as a society have the idea that you can just throw away babies when you get pregnant, that carries through into how we treat our living children,” Johnston said.

Grandmother Kristi Ramsey, who was also in attendance, went to Columbus for an abortion when she was 17 years old. “There are so many young people in our church trying to have children,” she said, “and if at the time I would have known I could have hooked up with a family that would have been able to support me and help me.”

Similar Life Chains were formed in hundreds of other cities across the country. Life Chain was begun in the United States in 1987 by Please Let Me Live, Inc., a small Christian pro-life ministry in Yuba City, CA. Each year, National Life Chain Sunday lines U.S. and Canadian sidewalks.